Donewaiting.com: Tankboy
May 6, 2008 – 11:41 am | Written by Tankboy
I met the guys in The Milwaukees years ago through my pals in Woolworthy. I can’t remember if the bands shared a label, or if they had toured together, or what, but I’ve kept in touch with The Milwaukees — who are actually located in New Jersey — over the years. There last album was titled American Anthems Vol. 1 and it was a raucous dose of rock and/or roll Minneapolis stylee — yes, I’m just going totally location name-happy here — that got a couple spins on the tankPOD.*
Anyway, I wrote elsewhere about the band last year when they went on a “living room” tour. The band booked acoustic shows in fans’ houses and just hopped from city to city. It underscored one of the reasons I really dig the boys, aside from the hooks of course, since they go out of their way to get the word out and get in touch with folks kind enough to give their songs a chance.
Today they just told me they’re now offering all of American Anthems Vol. 1 as a free download from their website. (Wonder if Reznor gave them a pep talk or something?) So I’m pleased to pass this info on to you. If you enjoy pop rock stuff, or that Replacements / Soul Asylum vibe, I recommend you expend a little bandwidth to snag to album.
DOWNLOAD: The Milwaukees - American Anthems Vol.1
*Getting more than two plays on the tankPOD is pretty impressive when one considers the sheer volume of music I have to listen to daily just to keep up with things.
Posted in MP3, Music, Tankboy | 1 Comment »
March 22, 2008 – 12:10 pm | Written by Tankboy
I thought The Raconteurs’ announcement that their latest disc, available both digitally AND physically this Tuesday, one week ago was pretty fucking right on as far as dealing with the whole album leak thing. The notion of just getting it out there and then promoting after it was available seems pretty in step with where the industry is headed, and I still don’t know how they wrangled all the physical distribution channels so quickly and so quietly.
I guess they didn’t count on someone over at Apple posting the disc as being available on iTunes yesterday, leading to a bunch of folks buying the disc 5 days before it was supposed to be released. In a digital file-sharing culture this is the same as leaking the album 3 months ago, since the internet critics will be falling all over each other to give their definitive views of the album.
Personally I’m going to hold off until Tuesday. Waiting week for an album is nothing tome … heck I used to have to wait months before I could hear something, and that was even backing the days when we always got mailed physical promos due to long lead times (a practice that is quickly growing extinct). I understand folks are excited about new music, and especially excited about anything with Jack White and Brendan Benson’s name on it, but just this once, when the band went through great lengths to a) NOT keep everyone waiting and b) expose everyone to their new album at the same time, would it have killed folks to wait it out the extra few days?
Additionally, his isn’t the first time a greatly anticipated album has “accidentally” been offered for sale through iTunes prematurely, so shouldn’t someone be asking some serious questions about just what the heck is up over there?
Posted in Industry, Music, Tankboy | No Comments »
March 11, 2008 – 11:19 am | Written by Tankboy
I’m listening to the new Mystery Jets album Twenty One right now and — so far — it’s delivering the goods I had hoped for! I’ve had the luxury of hearing them progress from close to the very beginning since a friend of the band’s was kind enough to send me an early version of their debut (which, by the way, changed substantially before its UK, and then belated American, release).
I’ve loved the band’s output, but always felt it was missing that one extra little magical ingredient to launch them from being great to truly terrific. When I saw them play live a few months ago that extra spark manifested itself in spades and I realized that not only were they gonna catch up to their hype, they were bound to surpass it.
They’ve lost a bit of the ‘67 Pink Floyd freneticism that drew me to them in the first place, but they’ve replaced it with an alarmingly mature grasp of rhythm and dynamics. They’ve launched past my sonic expectations and delivered a (proper) sophomore album that sounds like it was crafted with a band with decades of experience instead of the handful of years the Mystery jets have actually been active.
Posted in Review, Tankboy | No Comments »
March 6, 2008 – 12:13 pm | Written by Tankboy
A little birdie told us this morning that the Van Halen tour (was it ever actually “officially” canceled?) is back on.
But they’re still not playing SXSW. And neither is Led Zeppelin. Or Radiohead.
Posted in Industry, Music, Tankboy | 4 Comments »
March 5, 2008 – 2:13 pm | Written by Tankboy
Everyone is going bonkers over a few select quotes from a forthcoming Entertainment Weekly weekly article. However Malkmus said in this month’s Spin, “We still all get on, but it’s hard to imagine that band being a living entity again. If we ever got back together again, I’d like it to be later, when we’re really paunchy and our fans are cashing in their IRAs.”
That doesn’t exactly sound like a dude chomping at the bit to do a reunion, especially since his newest album with The Jicks, Real Emotional Trash, is easily his best post-Pavement outing yet.
I think the Pitchfork Festival show last summer where Nastanovich came on stage to beat a few drums is the closest thing we’re going to get to a Pavement reunion for quite a while.
Although, Stephen, if you want to prove me wrong, I am TOTALLY O.K. with that!
Posted in Music, Tankboy | No Comments »
March 4, 2008 – 1:31 pm | Written by Tankboy
Folks who purchased Ghosts I-IV but were unable to download (um, like us) were told to try again with the links they were sent via email. So I did. And this is what I got:
Hey, we did click on the original link, folks. And, adding insult to injury: please note they misspelled “original.” There seem to be bigger problems going on under the hood over there than a simply overtaxed engine, huh?
Posted in Industry, Music, Tankboy | 1 Comment »
March 3, 2008 – 1:43 pm | Written by Tankboy
I like Trent Reznor’s approach and embrace of digital downloading. I like it so much that I decided to fork out $5 for the full version of his just -released Ghosts I-IV, the instrumental album he just popped onto the internets this morning. I like financially supporting music that tries to push the sales model like Reznor has been doing, and after downloading the Niggy Tardust album a while ago, I expected the process to go seamlessly.
Well, not so much.
The parts where I entered credit card information and his site billed me went flawlessly, but actually getting the disc to download has so far been impossible. Is anyone else encountering this problem? It’s disheartening because I SO want to see this sort of thing succeed,but in order to get folks — even me — to pay for music you’re going to have to ensure the process you have in place for downloading will actually work.
Posted in Industry, Music, Tankboy | 6 Comments »
February 26, 2008 – 3:55 pm | Written by Tankboy
Sometimes a press release comes across our desk that we just can’t help but print verbatim. Well, portions of it at least.
(more…)
Posted in Industry, Music, Tankboy | 1 Comment »
February 25, 2008 – 5:37 pm | Written by Tankboy
The new Breeders disc, Mountain Battles, sounds an awful lot like the very first Breeders album, Pod. Most of the songs unfold at a sluggish pace, with Kim Deal’s ethereal vocals often the heaviest component of the songs within. In fact. there’s very little here reminiscent of the pop leanings explored on Last Splash, although the bouncy “Walk It Off” could have fit in alongside any of that album’s tracks. And were this a Major Label offering I suspect they’d bring in another producer to scrape the grime off “It’s The love” to reveal the shiny pop tune underneath.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the “comeback album” Title TK, but I’m enjoying this return to form more than I thought I would. To be honest, when I first heard Pod, I hated Albini’s production and though the whole thing dragged, but after listening to the album over and over during the interminable wait the group made us sit through before finally recording Last Splash, I grew to appreciate the subtle intricacies Pod offered up. Mountain Battles plots the same path, and while it doesn’t outdo its almost 2-decade-old predecessor, it does prove the band is slowly marking a clear return to form.
Posted in Music, Review, Tankboy | 3 Comments »
November 13, 2007 – 2:49 pm | Written by Tankboy
So, listening to the new Duran Duran album, one can’t help but admire the group for trying to update their sound via a truly risky route. Timbaland may be production gold to most, but his aggressively odd production doesn’t always mesh well with established acts. Plus, after missteps like his own solo joint, and the M.I.A. collab that is almost painfully brutish, his track record is no longer untarnished. So the fact that Timbaland, and his protégé Nate “Danja” Hills, basically sculpt Duran Duran (what is it, v13.0 now? something like that) is more fraught than it might have been a year or two ago.
The results are mixed. On one hand it’s a testament to Simon LeBon, Taylor, and the Rhodeses’ nimbleness that they end up sounding just like Duran Duran, despite the hip-pop backing beats. For the most part their pop smarts reign supreme, and the band actually turns in one of its best efforts in ages. At the same time, it’s weird that the flattest tracks on the album are the ones featuring Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. “Nite Runner” and “Skin Divers” feel constricted and too heavily scripted, and stand in stark contrast to the freewheeling white-boy funkiness of tracks like “The Valley” and “Tempted.” For the record, Timbaland does turn in one winner, “Zoom In,” even if I could have done without the race-car revving sound effect that pops up throughout that tune.
So Duran Duran proves they can still pen a winning pop single that sounds of the moment, but they also display, yet again, their inability to actually produce a solid album of pop singles. The album has too many turgid tunes weighed down by their own sense of misplaced drama — and one inexplicable instrumental track — and it’s these that ultimately torpedo the disc as a whole. I almost wish they had truly embraced the “now” and just released a series of digital singles … and maybe a couple cool globe-trotting videos to go along with those singles.
Photo from the band’s MySpace page by Kristin Burns
Posted in Music, Review, Tankboy | 2 Comments »
November 12, 2007 – 5:21 pm | Written by Tankboy
Only Neil Young would write a sequel to an album that never got released in the first place. The original Chrome Dreams lives in that grey limbo also occupied by the long-in-the-works retrospective box set Young has been piecing together for, well, forever. Chrome Dreams II collects songs written over a really long span of time and shuffles them together in a fashion that would lead most to believe the album was conceived as a cohesive whole from the get-go.
The album begins with the bucolic bliss of “Beautiful Bluebird” and then picks up to a shuffling boogie with “Boxcar.” So far, so good … nice pace, pleasant build-up, and solid songwriting is all in play. And then comes the walloping 18+ minute opus “Ordinary People.” Who has the balls to put an 18+ minute song three songs in?
Well, the answer is pretty obvious, and even more surprising than the placement of “Ordinary People” is the fact that those 18+ minutes never get old. Young hits gospel-choir heights through his churning guitar chords and trademark tenor warble, evoking a spiritual air grounded by his matter-of-fact lyrics and delivery.
The problem is that as wonderful as “Ordinary People” is, and it’s pretty terrific, there’s still seven songs to go after it’s finished it’s last note. And Young simply is not up to the task of besting such a shining moment, so the listener is left with an album’s worth of music that on its own would be a lovely experience, but pales as it’s forced to follow a true epic. And it’s a pity, because moment like the children’s choir bursting from within “The Way,” and the Appalachian hootenanny feel of “The Believer” are truly affecting.
I guess what I’m saying is that Chrome Dreams II is a terrific album, flawed only by its internal architecture. There are worse things to complain about, huh?
Posted in Review, Tankboy | No Comments »
October 25, 2007 – 12:31 pm | Written by Tankboy
Fader is releasing the Trent Reznor / Saul Williams collaboration The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! free of charge in DRM-free 192 kbps MP3 format. If you want a choice of formats, or you just want to directly support the artist, you can shell out $5. The album will be available for download November 1, but you can pre-order now.
In some ways this is awfully similar to the Radiohead model, with a few improvements. First of all, the higher baseline kpbs encoding is nice, but I really like the fact that if you pay, you can get the download in whatever format you’d like on up to FLAC.
Secondly, I don’t think this is physically coming out, so it won’t be viewed as a leveraging ploy / future CD-sales tactic. In fact it’ll probably give Williams more recognition than he’s (ever?) had. This is not just due to the sales model, since obviously Reznor’s involvement is pretty noteworthy … especially given his own recent outspoken disdain for the Major Label model of distributing music.
I’m liking these changing times.
Posted in Industry, Tankboy, Tech | 1 Comment »
October 19, 2007 – 6:23 pm | Written by Tankboy
I haven’t really written much about Rachael Yamagata, and what I have written tends to stick strictly to reviews of her music and previews of her performances. I’ve had lots of people ask me to write more about her, but I think that when a friend becomes famous you tend to grow overprotective of them. Considering Rach was like the little sister I never had, I’d say that was certainly the case in this instance.
However her name has been popping up more and more lately, so I’ve been thinking about her more. My little brother pointed out that she did an interview with Mandy Moore recently — which really is a good read since it dispenses with the usual back-and-forth in favor of a more revealing look at how Moore actually operates — and I keep hearing murmurings that her new album is coming out in the near future, though I’ve been hearing that for over 6 months now, so who knows.
I don’t really get to talk to Rach that much anymore. Aside from a couple of “catch-up” emails a year we don’t really get to talk, which is too bad, but that sort of thing happens even with friends who still live in town, a couple blocks away from me. It’s just sort of the natural progression of things. There was a period of time where all we would do is have hours-long conversations late into the night, and now I think our last spoken conversation was at my birthday party last year. Or was that the year before? Time flies.
Anyway, I dug out some old demos of hers that never saw the light of day. One batch is a bunch of recordings she did with Chris Holmes, some of which showed up in her later released stuff in a slightly less gritty form. I can’t really post them or share them, since they were given me by the artists involved and I don’t think they were ever meant to see the light of day. What I can share, however, is a track off her first demo, since that got passed around, and at one point Rach was giving them away at her solo shows, so I think it’s safe to share it.
The track, “Super,” was in regular rotation in Rach’s early sets. I didn’t give Rach her first solo show, but i do think I gave her the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th solo shows! It was fun to watch her go from playing to an audience of 9, including me and two of her bandmates from Bumpus, to playing sold out shows. Due to timing constraints I haven’t seen her the last few times she came through town, and I admit it might be a little weird to see her playing the Metro to a sold-out crowd of Rachael Yamagata fans, but I’m sure she’s still terrific on-stage.
Anyway, “Super” is a little poppier than some of the stuff she’s now better known for, and I think it was maybe one of her attempts to write a “guitar rock” type of song. It’s a little simple, but in this case I think “simple” is perfect for the song.
MP3: Rachael Yamagata “Super”
Posted in Chicago, MP3, Tankboy | 1 Comment »
October 10, 2007 – 3:34 am | Written by Tankboy
In Rainbows .. available now! With liveblogging!
15 Step
Getcher hip-hop on boys, including the trademark Yorke yowl.
Bodysnatchers
A rocker, but in the “anthemic” sense, a la “National Anthem.” Get it? Anthemic sense? Whatever … next song.
Nude
All I can say? finally.
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
The title would lead one to believe this is a throw off track .. but it’s not. In fact it’s a slow builder in the vein of King Crimson. That is if Fripp when knew when to hold back, which he doesn’t. A great bridge too, by the way.
All I Need
Mmmmm … bass keys. Nice and claustrophobic. Slowly expands,. but never really resolves itself.
Faust Arp
Think “Row Your Boat,” if “Row Your Boat” was sailing on the seas of paranoia. Also, file under folk tinged disaster.
Reckoner
I’ve heard this before … the band is beginning to repeat themselves. But at least their cribbing from some of their best moments. Creepy, subterranean, folk.
House of Cards
A distant cousin of “Pyramid Song,” only with a taste of The Bends.
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Oh! Now we’re back in OK Computer territory? I suspect this is the one that will have have fans wetting their pants. Aside from the inclusion of “Nude” of course/
Videotape
And again, a taste of the past, sort of “Exit Music.”
Overall, well worth the four bucks I paid for it — with is twice what the band would have made from a physical copy sold through a label.
Color us pleased androids.
BTW: The downloading process? Seamless, super-quick, and painless.
Posted in Review, Tankboy | 6 Comments »
September 30, 2007 – 9:45 pm | Written by Tankboy
Talk about making a splash. The new Radiohead album comes out October 10, is titled In Rainbows, and is only available through the band. And you get to decide how much you want to pay for it.
Seriously.
Here’s the tracklisting:
15 STEP
BODYSNATCHERS
NUDE
WEIRD FISHES/ARPEGGI
ALL I NEED
FAUST ARP
RECKONER
HOUSE OF CARDS
JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE
VIDEOTAPE
Posted in Music, Tankboy | 2 Comments »
